Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Can Mindfulness Make You Happier?

Today's guest post comes from Sarah Roberts, Ph.D. candidate in Psychology at the University
of Quebec in Montreal and blogger at Psychobabble for Normal People.

Mindfulness and mindfulness meditation are hot trends
in clinical psychology right now. What's all the buzz about?

Mindfulness refers to a state of mind characterized by
awareness and attention in the present moment, and by an accepting, curious,
and non-judgmental attitude. A Buddhist concept now integrated into secular
psychology and medicine, mindfulness is being cultivated by everyone from
chronic pain patients to stressed out executives, often through courses in
mindfulness meditation and mindfulness-based stress reduction.

The idea behind modern mindfulness training is that we
can decrease stress and increase well-being by changing our relationship to our
experience. Mindfulness means being present no matter what we’re doing, and being
aware and curious about what’s going on inside and around us--without judgement.
It means accepting experience, even when we don’t like it, and it means knowing
that, often, everything is truly okay—right this minute—and doesn’t need to
change. The application of these concepts in everyday life helps limit some of
our most ubiquitous mental health scourges, including sleep-walking through our
days without really connecting with anyone or anything; the rote pursuit of
questionable habits or routines; distracting categorization of every situation
or experience as good or bad; and focusing on the past or the future at the
expense of the present.

Mindfulness is often cultivated through mindfulness
meditation, a practice characterized by compassionate, aware, and non-reactive
engagement with immediate experience. This type of mediation usually involves
periods of sitting or lying down and paying attention to the breath, physical
sensations, sounds in the immediate environment, or other anchors for
attention. When distractions arise (e.g., an itch, a distracting thought), we
observe and accept them—without any effort to change them—and return our
attention to the anchor. This practice of present-moment focus and awareness,
openness, and curiosity allows mindfulness practitioners to develop equanimity
(i.e., composure, level-headedness, serenity). Over time, the attitude of
equanimity emerges in everyday stressful or difficult situations.

Many people who begin practicing mindfulness
meditation report improvements in mood, stress level, and overall quality of
life. It seems that practicing mindfulness can improve our quality of life and
make us feel happier.

How does it work?

Some of the ways that mindfulness can improve quality
of life or increase happiness are relatively easy to guess: It’s pleasant to
actually feel the steaming water on your back during your morning shower; it’s
rewarding to actually listen as your child describes his day, rather than
tabbing through your mental to-do list. Further, increased focus on the present
moment prevents us from spending all our time in the past, ruminating and
regretting, or in the future, inventing hypothetical anxiety-provoking
scenarios.

Where acceptance and non-judgment are concerned, acceptance
may decrease stress by helping us let go of control and accept the facts. So, for
example, when the doctor confirms that we’ve sustained a sports injury, we
accept that our body needs rest and rehabilitation, rather than injuring
ourselves further through denial and continued activity. Non-judgment may make
us happier by cutting out secondary emotions (e.g., getting angry because we’re
anxious; feeling guilty because we’re depressed) and the stories we tell
ourselves about certain experiences. So if, for example, you get a
less-than-stellar evaluation at work, it’s not necessarily “awful” and doesn’t
mean that you’ll probably be fired soon; it simply means exactly what happened:
you got a less-than-stellar evaluation this time around. Seeing unpleasant or
difficult situations for exactly what they are—without getting wrapped up in
our stories about the situations—allows us to use them as opportunities for
growth.

Researchers who study mindfulness are interested in
identifying the precise processes through which mindfulness improves mental
health and increases happiness, and several researchers have explored the role
of the self-discrepancy gap. Self-discrepancy theory (Higgins,
1987) states that we all
compare ourselves to internalized standards called "self-guides." Each
of us has several self-guides; the ones that are relevant here are the actual
self (our view of our current self and current attributes),
and the ideal self (our image of the person we wish to be, the attributes
we wish to possess, and our hopes and aspirations for ourselves). These two conceptualizations of the self
can be contradictory, and the contradiction can create sadness and
discouragement.

In
self-discrepancy theory, the self-discrepancy gap refers to the distance between our
actual self and our ideal self; the model suggests that we are all motivated to
reduce the gap so that our self-guides will match up, alleviating psychological
discomfort. Where mindfulness is concerned, the hypothesis is that closing the
self-discrepancy gap makes us happy, and that mindfulness meditation helps
close the gap.

This
hypothesis enjoys some research support: Crane and
colleagues (2008) investigated the impact on the self-discrepancy gap of an
8-week mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression relapse prevention.
They found that the participants who received the mindfulness intervention
demonstrated smaller discrepancies between their current and ideal selves than
did the control group. That is, after mindfulness training, participants’
self-discrepancy gap decreased. Itzvan and colleagues (2011) measured the
discrepancy between current self and ideal self in participants before and
after a weekend meditation workshop, and also found that the self-discrepancy
gap decreased significantly following the intervention.

It seems that
mindfulness may indeed decrease the self-discrepancy gap—but how? There are a
few possible mechanisms:

a) Part
of the psychological distress generated by the self-discrepancy gap is created
by negative judgment of our current self. The self-compassion and acceptance
inherent to mindfulness may allow practitioners to assess their current self
more positively. That is, we evaluate our current self as closer to our ideal
self, which narrows the gap and makes us happier.

b) Another
part of the psychological distress generated by the self-discrepancy gap is
created by striving to meet unrealistic standards for the ideal self. The
awareness and non-judgment characteristic of mindfulness may help practitioners
conclude that they don’t need, for example, to fit into size two jeans or be a
perfect parent in order to be acceptable. That is, we decrease the gap by adjusting
unrealistic standards for our ideal self; this adjustment narrows the gap and
makes us happier.

Finally, part of the psychological distress generated
by the self-discrepancy gap is created by excessive focus on the gap.
Mindfulness meditation is designed to cultivate present-moment attention and
awareness; being in the present moment deflects our attention from possible
self-discrepancies, reducing the amount of time we spend unhappily comparing
our current self with our ideal self. That is, rather than becoming happier by
decreasing the self-discrepancy gap, we may become happier by focusing our attention
elsewhere.

Anecdotally, clinically, and empirically, there is
ample evidence that mindfulness improves well-being and can increase happiness.
Multiple (non-mutually exclusive) mechanisms have been proposed: greater
appreciation of life via increased present-moment awareness; greater
productivity as a result of improved attention; the joy and ease generated by
acceptance and non-judgment; and a decrease in the self-discrepancy gap.

One of the reasons for the mindfulness buzz is that
mindfulness is accessible: anyone can learn about it and anyone can practice
it. Interested readers can read Wherever You Go, There You Are by renowned
mindfulness teacher Jon-Kabat Zinn or check out Kabat-Zinn here and here.

Sarah Roberts is a Ph.D. candidate in Psychology at the University of Quebec in Montreal and a mindfulness coach at the MindSpace Clinic. She blogs about mindfulness and other psych-related topics at Psychobabble for Normal People.

3 comments:

I wonder, in respect to all treatments, but as a good example in respectful to mindfulness: how much of the effect is derived from a portion of the study group? Or put another way: are there some people who are much more easily taught mindfulness than others? If so, why?

Could it be related to perception of actual or ideal self? Are people with larger gaps, harder to train? Does the data in the study reveal this?

In the same way that to treat high cholesterol we vary methods by patient-- some exercise, some eat less fats, some take a drug, some take another drug cause their body can't tolerate the first, some use combinations of methods-- I think treating stress et al will always need a combination of treatment strategies, in which mindfulness can hopefully play a role.

The studies don't mention how much of the effect is derived from a small portion of participants, or whether bigger gaps = bigger effects.

Where learning in mindfulness is concerned, my experience is that the main necessary ingredient is belief in mindfulness as something that can help and willingness to actually practice, i.e., to meditate. I agree with you that no treatment is a panacea--in my ideal world, stress would be treated with a combination of mindfulness, cognitive-behavioural strategies, and psychoeducation about/regulation of sleep, eating, and exercise.